Page images
PDF
EPUB

Wow And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,

Where first the child's glad spirit loves
Its country and its GOD!

WHERE ARE THE DEAD?

T. L. HARRIS.

HERE are the men of heroic mould,
Prophet and patriot, saint and sage,
Whose thoughts and deeds, so wise and bold,
Have been handed down from age to age :-

Leaders of men who bore the world.

Onward, through eras dark and fell,-
Who strangled earth's serpent-lies, and hurled
Its fiends to the depths of their native hell?

Where are the myriad souls who trod

This earth of ours in the days of old,-
Who pampered self, or worshipped GOD,-
Who loved and hated, and bought and sold?

Where, oh! where, are our dear ones fled,-
Father and mother, child and friend?
Where are all whom the world calls dead?
Can the life of the spirit be said to end?
Can thought, God-kindled within us, die?

Is our deepest love but a fleeting breath?
Is God's promise within the soul a lie?

Are all our powers but the spoil of Death?

But where are the dead,-in some far-off sphere,In some star remote,-in some world above?

Ah! no-they are ever around us here;

They dwell in the purple light of love.

They guard from evil, they warn from sin,
Prompt ev'ry generous just endeavour;

At the open heart they enter in,

On errands of mercy weary never.

They whisper low by the cradle-head,

And bring to the babe bright dreams of Heaven,

They hover around the dying bed,

With words of comfort and sins forgiven.

THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE GLOWWORM.

[ocr errors]

WILLIAM COWPER.

NIGHTINGALE, that all day long.

Had cheer'd the village with his song,
Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
Nor yet when eventide was ended,-
Began to feel (as well he might)
The keen demands of appetite:
When, looking eagerly around,
He spied far off, upon the ground,
A something shining in the dark,
And knew the glow-worm by his spark.
So, stooping down from hawthorn top,
He thought to put him in his crop.
The worm, aware of his intent,
Harangued him thus, right eloquent:-
"Did you admire my lamp," quoth he,

"As much as I your minstrelsy,
You would abhor to do me wrong,
As much as I to spoil your song;
For 'twas the self-same Power Divine
Taught you to sing, and me to shine;
That you with music, I with light,
Might beautify and cheer the night."

The songster heard this short oration,
And, warbling out his approbation,
Released him, as my story tells,
And found a supper somewhere else.
Hence, jarring sectaries may learn,

Their real interests to discern;

That brother should not war with brother,
And worry and devour each other:

But sing and shine by sweet consent,

Till life's poor transient night

Respecting, in each other's case,

The gifts of nature and of grace.

spent ;

Those Christians best deserve the name,

Who studiously make peace their aim:-
Peace, both the duty and the prize,
Of him that creeps, and him that flies.

London: FRED. PITMAN, 20, Paternoster Row, E.C.
Printed by J. WARD, Dewsbury.

[blocks in formation]

THE subject on which I have engaged to address you to-night is surrounded by grave difficulties, and will I may discuss it with the calmness and prudence that its require care on my part, and forbearance on yours, so that be the greater, because I am aware that the views which I great importance demands. The difficulty on my part will

shall

express, and endeavour to advocate, are opposed to those entertained by the great majority of my countrymen; -at any rate, if we take the expression of opinion in the public press as an indication of the general opinions of the country relative to the disastrous war now raging in America. And it is because I think that public opinion is being directed into a wrong channel, by a good deal of misrepresentation and ignorance on the part of those who assume to be the guides and teachers of the nation, that I to-night. My first object will be to give you a short (and it must necessarily be short) account of the past history of

the United States.

The great American continent was, as you are all aware, discovered by Columbus in the year 1492. But it was not till nearly two centuries later that the whole continent was defined and mapped, after much patient and dangerous investigation. That part of the continent of America known

3.-MARCH.

[ocr errors]

as the United States, lies south of our Canadian colony, and North of the Gulf of Mexico, and extends from the Atlantic on the east to the Pacific on the west; its width from east to west may be taken at 2,900 miles; and its length from north to south at nearly 1,700 miles; the area of this vast territory being about three millions and a-half of square miles.

Most of the north-eastern portion of the States was colonised by our Puritan forefathers, who, failing to obtain under the dark and tyrannical rule of the Stuarts, in this country, the freedom, political and religious, which they demanded, and to which they were entitled (and which, thank Providence, we to a large extent enjoy to-day), emigrated to America, and there laid the foundations of that great republic whose present struggle is occupying so much of the attention of the world. The south-eastern and some of the central states were largely peopled by colonists from France, Spain, and other countries; and from the first there is no doubt there have been essential differences of character and taste between the different sections of the country. Still, as I believe, fortunately for the world, the Anglo-Saxon element has predominated, and succeeded in extending its influence and character to a large extent over the whole of the States. The history of America for the last century has been mainly a second edition of our own national character. There are, however, and ever have been, broad distinctions between the Northern and Southern populations-the one having been originally peopled by men of deep religious convictions; the other chiefly of those whose ruling principles were a love of adventure and money.

The desire to worship GOD in freedom was the noble object of the Pilgrim Fathers who planted the New England States. Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is one of the greatest contributors of Quakerism to human progress; Rhode Island was consecrated to entire religious toleration; New York represented from the beginning, as it does still, the commercial element; while the South has been from the first, the home and hotbed of slavery and despotism; Georgia has been largely moulded by Methodism; and Maryland by Roman Catholicism, and, to the honour of the latter it ought to be said, toleration was granted in Maryland when some of the New England States were narrow, bigoted, exclusive, and persecuting.

The importation of slaves from Africa to the American continent was first made in the year 1620, to Virginia. This was done under the sanction and by the authority of our government; and a fatal day it was to the peace and progress of the New World. As the population grew, and emigration continued to flow westward, American colonists began to adopt systems of local government, and to form themselves into States, under the control and subject to the supervision of the Home Government. Virginia was the first State formed in the year 1607.

From the year 1765 the American colonist may be said to have been more or less in rebellion against our government; in 1773 that rebellion took the form of refusal to pay the taxes levied upon them, and the good people of Boston actually destroying the tea on which we had levied a tax. War was now openly declared, which resulted, as everybody knows, in the Declaration of Independence, on the 4th of July, 1776, and the admission of the Republic of the United States into the family of nations: and without at present discussing the merits and demerits of the particular form of government adopted by the American people, I feel bound, in justice, to say that the Declaration of Independence by the United States was one of the greatest political events in the history of the world, and deserves to be ranked with the struggles of Greece with Persia, or Switzerland with Austria; and I am satisfied that it will yet exert a more mighty influence on the future history of mankind.

When the United States severed themselves from the mother country in 1786, they consisted of 13 States, and about 3,000,000 of people. Those states were New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. To-lay (of course including the so-called Confederate States) they consist of over 34 States, and a population of 30,000,000 -being an increase of ten-fold in about eighty years.

The fundamental principle of government adopted by the United States, was, that while they united for great national purposes, each state was left free to manage all its local and private affairs. The Union regulated national taxation, peace and war, foreign relations, and so on. Each state has control of all matters strictly within its own boun

« EelmineJätka »